Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Moana Birbalsingh (born 16 September 1973) is a British teacher and education reform advocate who is the founder and head teacher of Michaela Community School, a free school established in 2014 in Wembley Park, London.

Politically, she identifies as a small-c conservative.

The daughter of an Indo-Guyanese academic, Birbalsingh was born in New Zealand and raised in Canada until she was 15 when her father began lecturing at the University of Warwick.

She cultivated an interest in education when reading French and philosophy at New College, Oxford and, after graduating, went into teaching at state schools in south London.

Birbalsingh was born in 1973 in Auckland, New Zealand, the elder of two daughters of Frank Birbalsingh, an academic of Indo-Guyanese origin, and his wife, Norma, a nurse from Jamaica.

Birbalsingh grew up mostly in Toronto and was educated at Victoria Park Collegiate Institute, with brief periods in Nigeria and France, She graduated from the University of Oxford after reading French and philosophy at New College, Oxford.

At university she was a member of the Socialist Workers Party and read Living Marxism.

While at Oxford, Birbalsingh had visited inner-city schools as part of a scheme the university runs to encourage state-school pupils to apply, and after graduation she decided to teach in state schools herself.

Birbalsingh is a supporter of the traditional teaching methods described in E. D. Hirsch's The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (1999).

She writes that the book "opened [her] eyes" to what was wrong in schools, and argues that education should be about teaching children knowledge, not learning skills.

She began hosting a blog, To Miss with Love, in 2007 under the moniker Miss Snuffy and later offered her support to the education policies of the Conservative Party and the reforms made by Michael Gove during his tenure as Education Secretary.

From 2007 she wrote an anonymous blog, To Miss With Love, in which—as Miss Snuffy—she described her experiences teaching at an inner-city secondary school.

Birbalsingh is the author of two books, Singleholic (2009) and To Miss with Love (2011), and editor of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way (2016) and Michaela: The Power of Culture (2020).

Birbalsingh's first publication was a novel, Singleholic (2009), published under the pseudonym "Katherine Bing".

In 2010 she was the assistant head of Dunraven School, Streatham, south London, and that year she joined St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell, also south London, as vice-principal.

Birbalsingh came to national prominence in October 2010 after criticising the British education system at that year's Conservative Party conference, and speaking in support of the party's education policies.

Referring to a "culture of excuses, of low standards ... a sea of bureaucracy ... [and] the chaos of our classrooms", Birbalsingh told the conference: "My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken, because it keeps poor children poor."

Following this, she says she became the target of racist and sexist abuse on social media.

After the speech Birbalsingh was asked not to attend the school at which she taught while the governors "discuss[ed] her position".

She subsequently resigned "after being asked to comply with conditions that she did not feel able to comply with", according to The Sunday Telegraph.

The school, St Michael and All Angels in Camberwell, London, was closed shortly thereafter and reopened with new staff and a new name.

Her second book, To Miss with Love (2011), was based on her blog.

It was chosen as Book of the Week and serialised on BBC Radio 4.

In 2014, she established Michaela Community School, a free school in Wembley Park, London.

Responding to the removal of Michael Gove as education secretary in 2014—Gove was also a supporter of Hirsch—she said it was a tragedy that his work would not be completed.

She is also the editor of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way (2016) and Michaela: The Power of Culture (2020), which describe the education philosophy of Michaela Community School.

In October 2021 Birbalsingh was appointed Chair of the Social Mobility Commission in succession to Martina Milburn.

She retained her position at Michaela.

Liz Truss, Minister for Women and Equalities, stated that "By expecting high standards and not indulging the soft bigotry of low expectations she is producing amazing results at Michaela school and giving children the best chance in life. She will bring that same attitude to the Commission and be a loud champion of equality of opportunity."

Birbalsingh was criticised for comments she made in April 2022 regarding young women not pursuing physics, stating that

"physics isn't something that girls tend to fancy. They don't want to do it, they don’t like it... I just think they don’t like it. There's a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do... the research generally … just says that's a natural thing,".

Birbalsingh responded to some of these comments in an article in the Daily Telegraph.

She resigned the position in January 2023, saying "I want to be able to speak publicly about what I think is right and not worry that I am bringing the SMC into disrepute".

Birbalsingh describes her views as being small-c conservative and argues such traditional values "which would once have been completely normal have completely disappeared."

She maintains that misguided progressive politics in schools have held ethnic minority and working-class children back from academic success and that the political left seek to address problems within education by pouring more money into schools rather than fixing deeper issues, stating "there is a lot of power in ideas, and if the ideas are wrong, then the education system will not deliver."

In an interview with Nick Robinson, Birbalsingh said that she previously identified as being on the political left at university but formed many of her current views through teaching in inner-city state schools and seeing the contrast between state school pupils and the educational opportunities of her fellow students at Oxford.

She argued that her experiences working as a teacher in deprived areas led her to believe that the state education sector encouraged a "culture of excuses and low standards" with regard to discipline and quality.

Birbalsingh maintains that children of black and ethnic minority backgrounds are not sufficiently taught about British culture or Britishness in schools which has left them feeling "culturally excluded".

She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours.

In October 2021, Birbalsingh was appointed chair of the Social Mobility Commission.